Posts Tagged ‘boulevard’

[UPDATE: I myself don’t read this SFMTA notice as a wholesale elimination of parking on the north side of Fell, As Seen On Reddit. (That kind of action would be much easier for the SFMTA to describe – they would just come out and said that.) IRL, this is going to be a bit of red paint here and there AFAICS.]

Here’s one of the PUBLIC HEARING notices just posted all over the western Fell street area:

Apparently, parking in between crosswalks will be eliminated, at least on the north side of the Panhandle / the south side of Fell Street.

At first I thought that these areas might get used for UBER and Lyft pickup and drop off, but they’re on the wrong side of the road. Anyway, dropping your friend off in the Panhandle will be easier after all the red paint gets put down, sometime later this year…

And here’s Fell at Baker, which flashes DON’T WALK for 12 seconds after giving ppl over 30 seconds of green WALK.

I mean, this is exactly wrong. Why not have 12 seconds of WALK and then over 30 of DON’T WALK instead?

Of course Geary is wider, but not all that much wider.

This situation makes no sense.

Now it might make sense to the SFMTA, which blows with the wind with its half-assed approach to safety.

But in the turning world outside of the SFMTA, this situation at Fell and Baker makes no sense. And mind you, this intersection was the subject of recent SFMTA boasting about how much the SFMTA has done for us here…

Can you see the fast food traces, like the blackened KFC Bucket on the left or the Taco Bell bell on the awning on the right?

Anyway, it’s JANE THE BAKERY now. (It’s just like ALICE THE RADIO STATION or TOAD THE WET SPROCKET, non? And it reminds me of SPORK, which wore its Valencia Street Taco Bell heritage proudly, back in the day.)

The Tree People are not happy, even though they’ve been promised replacement trees.

I’ll tell you, I can’t exactly see how it’s even remotely possible that whatever SFGov is doing to “improve” this intersection, plus the 3000 feet of Masonic to the south down to Fell, will “transform” this area, oh well.

Anyway, the large stand of old growth street trees what used to be out in front of 5 Masonic (in the triangle where you can see the light blue Mini Cooper) will get some kind of art installation. Will that be an “improvement?” IDK, I guess, for some people.

In the meantime, things are looking pretty bleak up there at windblown Mervyn’s Heights…

You know what a pigeon drop is? I sort of do, but I still don’t get it, not really. I’d be like, well, how is this going to work. And it was the same thing with the Octavia Boulevard disaster, which pitted a handful of landed millionaires of Hayes Valley, like a just a few homeowners, against all the little people of the West Side. It went back and forth a few times, but the West Side eventually lost and that’s how we ended up with the Octavia Boulevard disaster. Anyway, I never believed in it and I still don’t.

So that was then and this is now – traffic backed up all the way up and over the hill, going west from the Octavia Bottleneck. And this isn’t rush hour, this is just some random weekend day, when MUNI doesn’t even try, not really.

So I’m guessing that most of these drivers are trying to get to a freeway, but this plays Hell with crosstown traffic, which is down to Just One Lane.

But look ahead here – there’s a line of parked cars on the left side starting with a red one, see?

So why not just get rid of parking here? Wouldn’t that ease the bottleneck?

It sure would.

Of course our SFMTA is mad at UBER / Lyft these days and yes the arrival of all these Priuseses has hurt mobility, but why doesn’t the SFMTA react? Why can’t it fix its mistakes of the recent past?

What’s that, the SFMTA wants “buy in” from HV? But why is the SFMTA bending over backwards for HV over like eight or so highly intrusive parking spaces? I don’t get it.

The middle one there I guess could be described as a dessert house, but they serve an awful lot of tea and they have a teapot as a logo.

(Speaking of Geary, you know, if that Geary “BRT” project is so great, you’d think the local Supervisor would be behind it 100%, but I don’t think she is. Who’s paying for the BRT, do we know that? And how much are they paying, like per person? Seems as if the cheerleaders for this joint don’t know/don’t care. Oh well…)

So what have we here – do we have about 25 cars* backed up on Page attempting to get on the glorified 101 freeway onramp / offramp entitled Octavia Boulevard:

I ask of you, Gentle Reader, was this situation advertised as a part of the Octavia Boulevard project? I can tell you no it wasn’t.

Was this a particularly busy Sunday? NOPE, just a regular lazy Sunday as you can see by looking across horrible horrible Octavia Boulevard.

So what do you suggest, that all these people should take Sunday/Holiday schedule MUNI to the Caltrain or BART to get where they’re going? Well, gee that could very well take all of Sunday to get There And Back Again, right? You see, our society is wedded to the automobile. You may not like that, but that’s reality. And Octavia Boulevard certainly isn’t helping anything.

Hey, doesn’t this traffic belong on Oak? Yep. But the backups on Oak are worse – they routinely go much longer than 25 vehicles.

Perhaps, Comrade, this situation is only temporary as our automobile infrastructure withers away? Well, IDTS. Car registrations in Frisco are higher than ever right? We’ll have to wait for the 2016 data from the DMV but that data should be out soon and it will indicate another increase, to be sure.

And what of Uber, Lyft and the other TNCs? That’s a factor as well.

And all these factors are a good reason for a place like Hayes Valley, which is a crossroads, to better allow people to pass through. Obviously, the millionaire homeowning activists behind Octavia Boulevard might want to “improve” HV but how does that benefit everybody as a group. You know, most people in the world aren’t homeowing millionaire white people living in Hayes Valley, right?

Anyway, what this ridiculously short, ridiculously wide Boulevard ends up doing is blocking people from getting from Point A to B, and that includes People With Cars, and People On Buses, and People On Bikes and even People With Shoes walking about, right?

Hey, how about this, why not eliminate left turns from Page and Haight onto Octavia? That would help.

But what’s ridiculous is Hayes Valley people trying to create more traffic so their hood could go upscale.

And along with the is the left turn allowed going from inbound Market to Octavia. Left turns are rare on Market of course, and they’re allowed on the blocks preceding and following Octavia, so why do we allow left turns at already congested Market and Octavia? Oh, for the convenience of those living in Hayes Valley, the ones who laid things out?

Seems a little crazy to me…

*Oh, I’m sorry, it should be People With Cars in the vernacular of the day. Isn’t that right you People With Cellphones and you People With PCs? All right, time to get dressed this AM – I think I’ll wear some Jeans of Blue

Both these drivers wanted to turn left on northbound Church and left turns are allowed on weekends, but I can’t tell you which driver is turning left from the wrong lane.

Oh well.

There’s a similar situation on nearby Octavia “Boulevard” with right turns – drivers wonder if it’s legal to turn right from the middle lane. Apparently, putting up signs is considered “bad design,” which is ironic since all of Octavia Boulevard is bad design.

“I’m done with them. That’s why the mural is painted over,” Sherry said. She said that during the 2004 restoration, which took almost a year, she worked on the mural six days a week for almost a year and was only compensated for transportation and lunch. “It was an absolute nightmare,” she said. “All they could pay me was coming out of their poor little pockets, so I accepted it because at the time I could afford to take a lot of time to do this. … So I basically just did the work, and they let it go to hell again.

There was a theory that murals discourage graffiti. I don’t know well that theory worked out…